Promotional material for the Bonds Between Women and Water
conference, to be held at the University of Minnesota, Duluth,
September 28-30, 2000:

The Bonds Between Women and Water will bring together scholars,
artists, policy makers, and members of the community to explore the
multiple and diverse ways women and water are connected. The theme of
the conference will stress the bonds between women and water, and how
those bonds find expression in cultural, artistic, and spiritual ways
that enable compassionate action on behalf of both women and water. It
will also explore the treatment of both women and water in patriarchal
culture and the impact of this on the health and well-being of women
and water regionally, nationally, and globally. Plenaries, panels, and
special programs will present and weave together the practical,
spiritual, scientific, medical, recreational, cultural, and artistic
interconnections of women and water. Possible topics will include: the
role of women as water gatherers; water quality and women's health;
water goddesses in world religions; water as a spiritual symbol in
women's lives; images of women and water in art, poetry, and music.

This highly interdisciplinary conference will include concurrent
sessions in a variety of disciplines: Women's Studies, Sociology,
Anthropology, Philosophy, English, Religious Studies, Public Policy,
Biology, Medicine, Environmental Studies, Geography, Engineering,
Interdisciplinary Studies, etc. Because of its setting in Duluth,
Minnesota, the conference will highlight regional water issues
affecting women, as well as the natural setting of the
conference—the many rivers and streams and aquatic life of Duluth,
and of course, Lake Superior. Also, regional artists, musicians,
poets, and dancers will give expression to the connections of women
and water in live performances of their works. But the conference
will also be national and international in scope, showing the
interconnections of women and water around the globe.

As long as cowboys and cops have captured the imagination of kids, the
finger gun—thumb up, index finger out—has been a trusty sidearm in
the minds of American school children.

But in a nation shocked and on-guard after a series of school
shootings, that innocent gesture prompted a swift response from the
principal of the Blackstone Elementary School in Boston, officials
said yesterday.

The students in a second-grade classroom were responding to a visiting
drama teacher and play-acting to show different emotions in a class
last week, Boston School Department spokeswoman Tracey Lynch said.

When asked to show anger, one child raised a hand, fingers pointed in
the shape of a gun. Three more copied.

The teachers told the children that the gesture was not an appropriate
response to anger. One educator reported the incident to Principal
Mildred Ruiz-Allen.

Before class was over, Ruiz-Allen visited the children to talk
to the kids and stress that the finger gun—and what it might
represent—was not appropriate outside of the classroom drama
lesson.

"When she heard about it, the principal went to the class before it
was out and met with the kids to talk about what was appropriate and
what was not," said Lynch. "She wanted the kids to be able to
distinguish between play acting and know the gesture was not
suitable outside of their lesson."

[Ed: The same week, four kindergartners in Sayreville, New Jersey,
were suspended for playing cops and robbers, also using their fingers
as guns.]

3/27/00

Lawrence Barichello of Toronto, Canada, leads an anticircumcision
group called "Intact," and is looking for men to join in a
class-action lawsuit against doctors to compensate for emotional
injuries resulting from their being circumcised. "No detail is too
small," he says. "If someone taunts you in the locker room about
your penis, write down what they said and how you felt about it."
Participants are limited to men circumcised as an infant by a doctor
"for nonreligious reasons."

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
filed suit against the federal government, claiming that by serving
milk its school breakfast program is racially biased because a greater
percentage of black children are lactose intolerant.

On February 20, a headline in the San Francisco Examiner read,
"Priest's Healing Hands Credited with Miracles." The same day, in a
story by the same writer, the same newspaper's headline read: "Priest
Admits Touching Boys."

Fearing lawsuits, the management of Boston's famed Fenway Park ordered
vendors to stop tossing their small bags of peanuts across rows of
seats to buyers. Rob Barry, who has been doing just that for the last
19 years, says he may now have to retire.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Yeskey decision, which
extended disabled-rights law to prison inmates, an inmate sued when
guards "reduced his daily allotment of undergarments from five to
one." Another inmate challenged the denial of conjugal visits from his
HIV-positive partner. Another lodged an ADA complaint against his
rejection for a physically strenuous boot camp program, despite the
fact that he has no hands.

3/21/00

Ed O'Rourke sued Tampa Electric and half a dozen bars and stores that
sold him liquor over a 1996 incident in which he broke into a fenced,
gated, and locked substation and climbed up a transformer in what he
called a "drunken stupor," receiving a 13,000-volt blast.

At the University of North Carolina, a new student organization called
Fighting Legitimized Oppression of Women
(FLOW) has issued statements against synthetic tampons because of
the small risk to women of toxic shock syndrome, and because their
manufacture adversely affects the environment. A campus demonstration
featured FLOW members wearing tampon tiaras made of 100% cotton
passing out organic "Glad Rags," and a celebration of women's
monthly cycle featuring "music, dancing, and vulva cookies."

Couldn't help but feel good about your Clearwater front page article
on Dec. 27 about moving the osprey nest, until I took a closer look at
your photo.

Could it be that K.D. O'Connor, the person from Florida Power who has
relocated hundreds of nests of these federally protected birds, has
been blowing cigarette smoke in their faces for the past 11 years?

I wonder what the effect of secondhand smoke (although from the
pictured proximity it could almost be firsthand) has on these poor
creatures.

Course description for "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation,"
a fall offering by the English department of the University of Michigan:

Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn't mean that you don't
have to learn how to become one. Gay men do some of that learning on
their own, but often we learn how to be gay from others, either
because we look to them for instruction or because they simply tell us
what they think we need to know, whether we ask for their advice or
not. This course will examine the general topic of the role that
initiation plays in the formation of gay identity. We will approach it
from three angles: (1) as a sub-cultural practice subtle, complex, and
difficult to theorize, which a small but significant body of work in
queer studies has begun to explore; (2) as a theme in gay male
writing; (3) as a class project, since the course itself will
constitute an experiment in the very process of initiation that it
hopes to understand. In particular, we'll examine a number of cultural
artefacts and activities that seem to play a prominent role in
learning how to be gay: Hollywood movies, grand opera, Broadway
musicals, and other works of classical and popular music, as well as
camp, diva-worship, drag, muscle culture, style, fashion, and interior
design. Are there a number of classically "gay" works such that,
despite changing tastes and generations, ALL gay men, of whatever
class, race, or ethnicity, need to know them, in order to be gay? What
roles do such works play in learning how to be gay? What is there
about these works that makes them essential parts of a gay male
curriculum? Conversely, what is there about gay identity that explains
the gay appropriation of these works? One aim of exploring these
questions is to approach gay identity from the perspective of social
practices and cultural identifications rather than from the
perspective of gay sexuality itself. What can such an approach tell us
about the sentimental, affective, or aesthetic dimensions of gay
identity, including gay sexuality, that an exclusive focus on gay
sexuality cannot? At the core of gay experience there is not only
identification but disidentification. Almost as soon as I learn how to
be gay, or perhaps even before, I also learn how not to be gay. I say
to myself, "Well, I may be gay, but at least I'm not like THAT!"
Rather than attempting to promote one version of gay identity at the
expense of others, this course will investigate the stakes in gay
identifications and disidentifications, seeking ultimately to create
the basis for a wider acceptance of the plurality of ways in which
people determine how to be gay. Work for the class will include short
essays, projects, and a mandatory weekly three-hour screening (or
other cultural workshop) on Thursday evenings.

3/20/00

Environmental Activists launched a class-action lawsuit again
Monsanto,
the largest producer of genetically modified seeds, arguing the
company misled farmers by saying the seeds were safe and would be
accepted by the public, who instead were scared out of their wits by
the same environmental activists.

In South Carolina, officials at Bob Jones University
dropped its ban on interracial dating in the wake of criticism
following Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's visit to
the school. Explaining the policy change on CNN's
"Larry King Live," university president Bob Jones III said the ban
was part of the school's stance against a "one-world order" that
would witness the blending of governments, ethnic groups, and
religions, and that would signal the coming of the Antichrist, to
which the school remains opposed.

Hispanic employees won a lawsuit against an Avis Rent A Car
in San Francisco after a supervisor persistently abused them using
racist epithets and insults. In upholding the damages, the California
Supreme Court issued a list of offensive words that may no longer be
used in any way in any workplace in the state, not even jokingly among
Hispanics themselves. The American Civil Liberties Union
supported the restriction.

3/15/00

California Gov. Gray Davis, who earlier angered legislative leaders
by saying their job is to "implement my vision," insisted yesterday
that judges he appoints should "reflect the views I've expressed"
or resign.

"I've let every judge know that, while they have to follow the law
... they're there because I appointed them, and they need to keep
faith with my electoral mandate," said Davis, who was in Washington
for the National Governor's Association conference....

3/13/00

Anti-drunk driving activists denounced a new ad campaign by the
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Aimed mainly at college students and released just in time for
St. Patrick's Day, the ad features people who have replaced their
milk mustaches with beer foam. PETA argues that drinking beer is
healthier than milk and that the dairy industry is cruel to cows.

The previous fall, PETA received an angry letter from the
National Organization for Women
because another of its ads featured a close-up of a woman's unshaven
panty line along with the tag line: "Fur Trim. Unattractive."

The Surgeon General released a report concluding that "one in every
five Americans experiences a mental disorder in any given year, and
half of all Americans have such disorders at some time in their
lives." Mental disorders are defined as "alterations in thinking,
mood, or behavior that cause distress or impair a person's ability to
function," including "depression, attention-deficit or hyperactivity
disorder, and phobias."

[Ed.: The purpose of the report, in case you didn't catch it,
was to increase anxiety levels.]

It is no secret, of course, that this economy has generated
enormous new wealth in America, sudden wealth that changes lives
dramatically. But having it all can generate some unexpected problems
that send many of the newly rich running for a therapist.

Jim Avila, reporting:

It's an unusual virus with unusual symptoms. The hot zone:
California's Silicon Valley, where experts say 60 new millionaires
are created every day. Symptoms: too much money, too much loneliness.
After treating many patients, psychologists have a name for it: sudden
wealth syndrome and a center to study it.

Joan DiFuria, of the Money, Meaning and Choices Institute,
which facilitates charitable contributions:

An array of symptoms may be that they're embarrassed, guilty,
ashamed, sometimes in denial with their money.

Avila:

A sense of isolation, imbalance, brought on by sudden riches and
nothing meaningful to do.

David Seuss:

I remember thinking, "Gee, I wish I could have a meeting now, but
there's no one at home to have a meeting with."

Avila:

CEO David Seuss says he suffered through it, making millions at
his computer software company in the '80s, selling [the company], and
swearing never to be the boss again. Too much pressure. But ten years
later he's back, running Northern Light,
an Internet search engine, unable to join the idle rich.

3/12/00

In Mississippi, Republican legislators drafted a law that would make
it illegal for sexually aroused men to appear in public. The law,
targeted at lap-dancing establishments, would forbid the "showing
of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state."

From Marina to Monterey, they're trying to fight city hall. And when
city hall fights back, they seek a few kind words, support and advice
from each other.

Whatever their cause, be it to make government spare cypress trees in
Marina or preserve Carmel's historic buildings, there is a place to
turn when the bureaucrats don't seem to be listening: The Support
Group for People Civically Abused.

What constitutes civic abuse? Any time government turns its back on
you, according to Barbara Evans who is spearheading the group.

Marylou Whitney, an heiress to the Vanderbilt fortune, withdrew
her financial support from New York's Whitney Museum
over a politically inspired piece planned for its prestigious 2000
Biennial exhibit. "Sanitation," by German-born New York artist Hans
Haacke, consists of a wall of garbage cans with speakers blaring the
sound of marching jackboots, a reproduction of the First Amendment
and, set in an old German typeface favored by the Nazis, quotations
from Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and other Republicans. (Giuliani had
recently angered many in the art world after he attempted to withdraw
city funds from the Brooklyn Museum over its controversial "Sensation" exhibit.)

The Whitney received harsh criticism from the Anti-Defamation League,
which charged that the work trivialized the Holocaust. Objecting to
the politicization of art Haacke's piece represents, Mrs. Whitney said
she was aware that her withdrawal of a planned $1 million endowment
might "turn him into a martyr," and "cause people to line up for
six blocks to see this trash," but that "you have to stand up for
what you believe."

3/6/00

The Supreme Court invalidated a long-standing Hawaii law authorizing
a quasi-governmental "Office of Hawaiian Affairs" to disburse public
funds to people
solely on the basis of whether they could trace their ancestry to the
pre-1778 inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaiians without the
requisite "blood quantum" were not allowed to vote in statewide
elections for the OHA board of trustees.

Oddly, the Clinton Justice Department
had sided with Hawaii's losing argument: that some exceptions to the
Fifteenth Amendment might allow ballot restrictions based on race.
Following the vote, Hawaii officials reassured reporters that only the
state's voting scheme had been struck down. The ruling did not affect
the state's race-based spending programs, none of which were
challenged in this case.